Sunday, February 28, 2016

I've become far less active in my current job, so
much so that physical things I used to take for granted are no longer at the
same level of performance, which stuns me. For example, my right shoulder still
hurts from playing video games for a few hours weeks ago, all from having the
angle slightly off why was using the mouse. While I'm careful with my wrists,
this shoulder pain comes as a complete surprise and indicates to me that my
level of physical ability has dropped severely from several years ago when I
was moving office supplies around on a daily basis. Not to mention biking to
and from work, which was its own cardio workout in and of itself.

I have taken the first steps in purchasing and
using my exercise bicycle. As of last week, I've been cycling a steady 15
minutes a day at a moderate tension setting, not pushing things as I'm keeping
an eye on my heart rate - it has been holding at around 100 BPM , which is
excellent for a light workout of that order.

A few more weeks and I should be up to a higher
tension setting for longer, building up a sweat in the process. I'll also be
doing some basic lifting exercises at home with light weights, in order to tone
my arms back up to where they were; playing video games and working around the
apartment shouldn't cause me pain, and once I'm done with these preliminary
exercises over the coming month I'll consider the next step to take, which may
involve the local gym.

In the evening, I attended my girlfriend's Craft Of Writing presentation, the 12th
in her ongoing series this year as part of our local Victoria writing group. I
was able to stay out of the limelight while still contributing to the group,
which eased my anxiety greatly as did the uncrowded and softly-lit meeting
venue at the Atrium downtown.

We talked about the process of creating a first
draft of a novel or other similar works, to which I was able to contribute a
fair bit of working knowledge from my own experience in the process. It was
gratifying to be able to share my own information with others who found it
useful and meeting went quite well while still finishing early enough for us to
spend time having a late dinner at a nearby sushi spot. The Japanese art of
preparing raw fish has been growing on me since last year and I am pleased to
say that there's quite a few good sushi spots now in downtown Victoria, enough
to give a pleasant variety to one's dining choices.

There's nothing fishy about good sushi, you know.

Feb 23 – No Tea, Less Stress?

Caffeine is not something in my diet right now.

Given that I'm still suffering from anxiety, it
only makes sense to cut out anything food-wise that can contribute to stress
levels. That includes caffeine, which is well known as a stimulant that can
increase a person's heart rate, which is exactly the opposite of what I need
right now.

As of last week, I've gone from having cut back
to a half a pot of tea a day to only a single cup of tea in the late afternoon
before heading home from work.

It seems to be working. I have been naturally
waking up around 7 AM for the last few months for work anyway, usually without
any real grogginess unless the cats been keeping us awake( which he has this
week - last night I got four hours of sleep total )so that's an indicator
that I don't need caffeine in the morning unless absolutely necessary.

This also has the benefit of not contributing to
an acidic stomach, which I've been known to suffer from if I have too much tea
to drink in a day. Even a full pot of tea, made with just one teabag, is too
acidic for me, though I have been known to let the teabag steep for too long
sometimes when I'm getting ready for work in the morning.

Keeping an eye on this sort of thing is
necessary, as I want to be able to fall asleep naturally and wake up in the
morning feeling rested without any sort of stimulants taking too much of a role
in my daily life. We all drank coffee or tea and have a lot of sugar in our
diets, so cutting all those out of mine should make a big difference in the
near future.

For now, I just have to get used to feeling out
of sorts - until I don't anymore.

Feb 24 – STRESS

Today did not end well.

My parents insisted on picking me up from work
today, so that I could help them configure their new Samsung S6 phones that
they'd just spent the afternoon purchasing. I had advised them on the purchase
a few days ago and they did a little research before committing to another
contract today, upgrading from their older HTC M7 phones to the slick new
Samsung models - a good choice, and my eyes.

What wasn't
a good choice was to have me work
on them tonight.

The process of setting up their phones was not
done by Telus, unfortunately, so I had to do things like configure there are
Wi-Fi settings, install a few favorite apps and get other things working with
their Google account.

These things by themselves would have been
stressful, but technology isn't a strong suit of my parents and their
frustration with the need for remembering passwords or configuring other apps
began to show itself in their behavior. It wasn't their fault and I did the
best I could, but it's always been this way with them - hence the need for me
to assist with new technology as needed.

Within an hour, I was a nervous, frustrated wreck
and I barely got them out the door before I had to sit down to get a hold of
myself before a full-blown panic attack could manifest. I spent the rest of the
evening practicing breathing and meditation techniques as well as taking
calming herbs( and herbal tea )to try and calm myself.

While I succeeded, it was a complete waste of an
evening that I had planned to use for other things, including writing. I ended
up sending a polite but firm e-mail to my parents explaining the situation and
I don't believe this sort of thing will ever happen again; they're wonderful
people and wouldn't intentionally upset me.

The silliest part was that I realized I hadn't
really got to play with the new phones all that much, which was a shame.

Feb 25 – Show N'Tell

I hosted my first writing group evening tonight
in many months.

Heading out to the meeting tonight, I was
somewhat anxious, as I'd be in a busy place with mostly strangers at the table
and given how stressed I was yesterday, I wasn't sure how things would go.
Would I need to step away from the table in order to calm myself?

I needn't have worried.

Experience is a lovely thing. A AI was in charge
of the evening, the role took over and evening proceeded apace. There were about
eight people in total, myself included and tonight was all about sharing one's
written work, a short 500-word piece per person( except for me, as I was the
host ).

We had six new people, including one lady who has
sold quite a few of the nearly 2 dozen self-published novels that she's written
to date; impressive! There were a few nervous people among them, but
surprisingly I found it quite easy to keep everyone on the level despite my own
worries about stressing out, which turned out to be unfounded.

It was an excellent evening overall, where
everyone who shared their written pieces received excellent feedback and there
were smiles all around. In fact, the same woman who had published so many books
of her own wrote me after the meeting, to thank me for providing such excellent
feedback on her current story piece that she was working on. It was extremely
gratifying to know that I was able to be so constructively critical despite my
current personal imbalances and to assist another writer so ably with making
their work better.

What a great
night~!

Feb 26 – Bee Aware

What's going on with the bees lately?

For over a decade now, scientists have been aware
of declining bee populations globally, but little progress has been made in
determining how to reverse this deadly trend. Bees are necessary for
pollination in over 75% of the world's crops, so the loss loss of their
population will be keenly felt by humans quite quickly. Several different
man-made causes of population decline have been pinpointed recently, which is
vital to discovering the next step to take to save the bees.

What can we really do about it though?

New strategies are being tried all around the
world, including a few old ones. Diversity is the key in many places where
'monocropping' has eliminated far too many of the wildflowers and other plants
that bees used to use as staging areas: giant fields of the same crop are like
deserts to them if there aren't places to stop along the way.

This fascinating article talks about how farmers
are going back to the old ways of doing things in India, Mexico and Tanzania.
Ancient hive management practices are being revived in order to nurture
declining bee populations and ensure that local farmers are all plugged into
the need to protect this vital biological resource.

In Toronto, bees are high on the everyone's
priority list. There is a healthy community of urban beekeepers in the city,
helping to keep a thriving pollinator population alive and well:

I think what scares me about bee loss is that too
few people are where the problem and even fewer are aware of how critical they
are to life on our planet.

Feb 27 – The Skinny on Cable

I've not had cable for six months, and I'm really
enjoying it.

To be honest, I have a ton of movies and TV on
DVD and Blu-ray( not to mention NetFlix, AmazonTV and other streaming sites online
) so I'm not hurting for entertainment, that's for sure.

But for those folks who haven't cut the cable
yet, good news is in the pipe coming next month: skinny cable.

The CRTC has mandated that all cable providers in
Canada must have basic cable TV channel grouping packages at
'reasonable cost'as of March 1, 2016. This grouping must have all the channels
on the CRTC's mandatory distribution list, which includes CBC, Global and CTV,
as well as public interest stations like APTN and minority French or English
language channels.

All for $25 - or less.

Considering I couldn't get my combination cable
TV / Internet bill to total less than $100 before I pulled the plug, that's
really interesting news and wallets across the country will welcome it with
open arms.

The cable companies, less so.

Skinny cable still won't entice me to head back
to cable TV land, not when I'm paying $45/month for Internet service that gives
me all the access to the world that I need. Though I still do get several
broadcast TV channels over the air, I've missed out on watching favorites like
the new X-files or New Girl, simply because I don't have the time or even the
means of recording them.

I'll get around to seeing them eventually, which
is part of the beauty of modern entertainment: you can buy, rent or record
whatever you want, whenever you want and right now, that's reserved for when I
have the time to spare.

It's been a real challenge to both figure out
what parts I need and how to source them cheaply; my budget is minimal, both
monetarily and timewise. I have about a month left to pull it all together,
including fabrication and painting, which is going to be cutting it close - but
I think I can do it, even with the delay caused by the last few weeks of my
emotional yo-yo state.

I've been relying on online forums for ideas on
what materials to use, as well as to get the proper patterns and other
resources I need to create the costume. The original armor props were created
by Terry English out of aluminum, and he still making them today, though a
fully-painted costume will set you back around $5000 Canadian – way, way out of my budget. This is what I'm trying to achieve, or at least an 80%-level copy:

The materials I'll be using include EVA foam
mats, the kind that you stand on for comfort for long hours at a time. I did
also managed to locate a Canadian source online for webbing and the buckles to
make the armour straps, which was a great find as shipping items from the
states is costly given the current crappy exchange rate. At least I can find paints that will be a close
match to the on-screen colours locally, and I can make everything myself in my
apartment for the most part: I've put together two sheets of plywood to convert
my bed into a makeshift workbench as needed. Taking over the bathroom for
prop-making in a shared apartment isn't really in the cards.

This week I also scored a huge find: a mannequin! It's most impressive:

I've named him ARMeY, for obvious reasons and he
was real find for a mere $50 from a local seller - her last one! He looks like
he's never been used and is in perfect condition, complete with an adjustable
stand and he's exactly my size, torso-wise! So I'll be able to use ARMeY o help me fit all the armour pieces together properly from all angles, far
more easily than I would be able to if I had to work on them without a display
mannequin.

Given my lack of costuming skills, I need all the
advantages I can get this coming month.

I think the worst of the anxiety is behind me.
Barring this week's unexpected evening episode born of frustration, I think
I've been doing fairly well in being able to keep an even keel both at work and
at home. I've been able to concentrate on my tasks and not feel trapped in
mental loops on any particular topic, which is a change from the previous week.
Slow but steady improvement is the order of the day, I think, for the coming
weeks.